Ya know, there are so many WATBs on the other side that it is easy to forget that not only were all of us humans once WATBs, but we Kossacks can become so ourselves at the drop of a hat.

Big meanie Bob Kerrey has given rise to the latest outbreak of WATBism (WAIT I HEARD THAT THAT SOUNDS LIKE WAHABIISM YOU CALLED ME A WAHABI AL QUADA I CALL BULLSHIT) by trying, pretty inelegantly, obviously, to compliment Barack Obama on the diversity he embodies in his name, experience, and outlook.

C'mon people. Let's leave aside the question of Kerrey's intentions. Or better yet's say that he DID mean to raise the question of whether Obama has ties to Islam.

So what?

Waaaaah

I hate my mommy party

I want a daddy party

I hate my daddy party mommy party

I hate politicians

Go away politicians

I'm scared to buy a house

I hate you mommy daddy party

... wait! there's more!

The New York Times article on the document dump currently up essentially falls right into an obvious trap laid by the dump perpetrators. The story bases a highly dubious claim high up in the piece on a way-too-credulous reading of the very first set of documents. More after the jump.

Big news folks. From Roll Call:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in line to become Speaker in January, is throwing her support to Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) in the race for Majority Leader, a move that will be an early test of her influence and will weigh heavily on Murtha's contest with Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) for the post.

What to make of this on the flip. UPDATE: Josh has the full text of Pelosi's letter. UPDATE 9:25 EST: Michael Crowley at TNR (yeah, yeah, I know) writes:

a milder interpretation from someone sympathetic to Hoyer: Given her tight relationship with Murtha, Pelosi's declaration was not a surprise. Expressed in writing, it has much less impact than would a press conference. Her letter does not include an exhortation for other members to follow suit and makes clear she is responding to a request from Murtha to take a position. That said, I notice the letter offers glowing praise for Murtha, including for his role on the campaign trail--an area in which Hoyer's camp has been claiming a big advantage over its Pennsylvania rival.

It's become a truism over the past 48 hours (i.e. over the past aeon in the blogosphere) that the punditocracy's degree of delusion about the campaign to unseat Joe Lieberman can be measured by its total disinterest in the primary campaigns being run against significant Republicans from their right.

Well there's news from the world of Republican primary politics: Rush Limbaugh ballistic on Lincoln Chafee today. Probably not for the first time--but it's the first time we've noticed since the Nedmentum! craze reached full force.

Jay Antenen, an intern at Josh Marshall's media empire, made this great catch over at the TPM Cafe. Transcript after the break.

So the Tempest in a Teapot about Jerome's alleged touting and Kos's email shows that Washington is out of touch with how people value integrity. I can buy that.

But Isn't that mainly because Washington is a place where people are so under a microscope that they get used to appearing to have no integrity?

And isn't that problem really just a feature of public life?

So, I really can't believe that I'm the first person to diary this here, as it's been up on Atrios and Josh Marshall for a while, but ...

Bob Woodward has been forced to announce that, guess what, he was told that Wilson's wife was CIA WMD way way back when ... before any other journalist was told!

His spin will be that this is why he's been pooh-poohing the leak as a big deal all over the media. Whew. Clearly his years inside the spin dome have him twirling a whirly. What--"it's no big deal, which is why I'm not on the phone to the prosecutor's office offering to give my testimony"?

We're all just getting our heads around this but some stabs at interp. on the flip.

So sports fans, in case you haven't heard the big news:

Theo Epstein stunned the Red Sox and the baseball world this afternoon by walking away from his job as general manager.

Just hours before his deal was set to expire at midnight, Epstein told his bosses and associates at the Red Sox' Yawkey Way offices that he had decided not to accept a three-year deal worth $1.5 million a year, an extension for the contract he signed on Nov. 25, 2002.

Epstein had done some agonizing soul-searching the past few days, torn between staying at the job he had always coveted since his childhood days in Brookline and leaving because of intra-organizational politics and power struggles that he ultimately decided he could not live with any longer.

Money and length of the contract were not issues in the past few days for Epstein, who had lobbied hard for an annual salary of more than $1 million a year.

Well, good for Theo, I say. He won it all, had a great ride--but shouldn't talent like his really be put to some greater public use? Which raises the questions I explore on the flip ...

Today's metacontroversy concerns "BREAKING!" headlines. I try to stay away from these metacontroversies but I have an idea about this one that I want to share.

I've long thought we need to supplement the diaries with a similar service devoted to supposedly "BREAKING!" news, posted on an opposite principle; no MORE than 50 words in a post, a links interface in place of the poll interface, and that's it. That way when 10 people simultaneously alert us to what we've known for years (say, that John Hannah is probably cooperating w/ Fitz), it won't displace someone's beautifully-crafted think piece.

Duplicate "BREAKING!"s: no harm, no foul. When things scroll away, well, that's the point, they're no longer "BREAKING!" then are they? It would be a kind of dkos news ticker. Comments and updates could be used to direct people to other links or to where the main discussion of a thread coalesces. Some sort of recommendation system would be an option but would perhaps not be necessary.

It's hard to think outside the box when it comes to the Harriet Miers nomination situation.

In this case, that's because, among other reasons, it is fun to stay in the box and watch the Rethugs and Wingnuts yelling at each other.

But to understand the true stakes of the situation we need to take into account the UNSPOKEN but salient factors at work. To hear the UNSPOKEN spoken, read on ...

Piecing together two very juicy posts from Josh Marshall within the parameters mapped out by Sunday's MSM tick-tocks on the Hurricane, I now forcast that THIS SCANDAL, HAVING TAKEN OUT BROWNIE, HAS PAUSED ONLY TO GATHER STEAM. IT WILL REGAIN FULL FORCE AND SLAM INTO THE WHITE HOUSE SHORTLY.

Details after the jump ...

Sorry for the shouting. Just wanted to call attention to a great point made by Pyrrho in a diary that is quickly scrolling away now, and that unfortunately got filled with a flame war over diary policing, but that needs to not be neglected: a point about how we can cope with the fast-rushing diary stream.

"Communications is Down"

"We're trying to get a handle on it."

"I do get briefed."

"I fully understand people wanting things to have happened yesterday."

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

[Asked if there is enough money]

"We can win the war on terror, and we will win the war on terror. And we will help the people in Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama as well."

Most of that is from the excerpts showed live. Suspiciously, the sound is out on the full-length video on the GMA page. I bet there is lots there that is even worse.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/

Wow. I guess they should've sent the 101st Airborne PR dept. to Washington not to Baton Rouge. Even ABCs editing couldn't keep Bush from looking like a total asshat.

Lots of diaries springing up venting about how this morning's bombings are somehow the fault of Bush, Blair, Israel, the Iraq war, etc. etc. etc.

Make no mistake about it, there has been a massive misallocation of resources in the West since 9/11, a series of mistakes that have NOT, as the good Doctor once said, made America (or anyone else) safer.

But I think we need to resolve to refrain from blaming the bombings on the conduct of Western leaders. The bombings are the fault of the bombers. Let's be clear on that. And there's more to think about ... after the jump.

Don't let's waste our petition-driving, email-campaigning, blog-mobbing or freeping energies on Jomentum Two (Electric Boogaloo, as Atrios has it). This campaign won't need our help to go nowhere.

Quite the opposite. Joementum Two's best hope is to be able to style himself the anti-Dean "moderate voice" who's down with the media whores, etc etc., and any campaign of ours against him just helps make that (barely) possible.

More after the jump.

Howie's Lead:

Sorry, Howie, even the mediawhorish Kit Seelye, in her NYT story on the subject, shows your boviating for the agitprop it is. For instance, she highlights how

More after the jump.

Ok, so every other diary I post is pimping for Josh Marshall's site. And I guess this one is a twofer since every other main thread I post in has me defending The New Republic as worthwhile reading, even if it does host some wrong arguments.

But I just wanted to alert those in the community that Jonathan Chait of TNR is guest blogging at TPM, and the results are quite interesting, especially to us.

Armando asked me to "refute this."

Ok, I'll respond. All I ask is for a constructive discussion, unlike those where Armando has been flaming right and left.

To see what it is I'm supposed to "refute," & etc., see the continuation.